Monday 25 January 2010 07.46 EST
First published on Monday 25 January 2010 07.46 EST

A businessman was jailed for life years after he raped and strangled a teenage girl and boasted to murder squad officers that he would never be caught.

Paul Hutchinson, 51, who is twice married with four children, was told he would serve at least 25 years after he admitted murdering Colette Aram, a trainee hairdresser, in October 1983.

Hutchinson, who had no previous criminal convictions, was caught after his son was detained on a driving matter in June 2008. A DNA swab taken of his son provided a familial match to genetic material found on a paper towel at a pub where the killer stopped for a ploughman's meal minutes after killing Colette.

The landlady of the Generous Briton had noticed blood on a customer's hand. Forensic experts found that the paper towel contained DNA traces of Colette and her killer, but it failed to match anyone on the police database.

Colette's murder was the first case profiled on the BBC's Crimewatch when it launched in June 1984.

On the day she was killed, the 16-year-old spent the afternoon baking cakes before walking to her boyfriend's house a mile away from her home in Keyworth, Nottinghamshire. The former electrician-turned-businessman bundled the teenager into the back of a stolen Ford Fiesta. He beat her over the head with a bottle before raping and strangling her and arranging her body in a field in a sexually provocative pose.

After the murder, Hutchinson, a psychology graduate who had also been a youth worker, returned to the village to watch the police investigation unfold and later sent a letter taunting officers that he was still free.

"No one knows what I look like. That is why you have not got me," he wrote, also claiming he was wearing a Halloween mask. "You will never get me."

Hutchinson, of West Bridgford, Nottingham, was sentenced at Nottingham crown courtafter admitting the killing at a hearing last month.

The court heard that on the day of the murder Hutchinson hid in a shed, spying on young girls at a riding school. He stole the car and drove to Keyworth, where, armed with a bread knife, he approached two more schoolgirls.

Later that evening, Colette, who was usually picked up by her boyfriend Russell Godfrey, set off to his house in the village. Witnesses reported hearing a woman screaming at about 8.10pm before a car drove off at speed. It was not until 9am the next day that officers found Colette's naked body in a field a mile and a half from where she was abducted.

At the time of the murder Colette lived seven streets away from Hutchinson in a house she shared with her parents Jacqui, 63, Tony, 69, and brother Mark, now 45.

After his arrest, Hutchinson had planned to blame the murder on his dead brother. But he changed his plea after detectives revealed they had found a DNA sample of the brother and it did not match the sample taken from the pub.

Detective Superintendent Kevin Flint, who was in the incident room the night Colette disappeared, has led the investigation since 2004. "I think the message this conviction sends out is that we will never give up," he said.

Hutchinson's DNA has not been found at the scenes of any other unsolved crimes.